Vancouver city council has voted to approve major policy changes aimed at speeding up new hotel construction.
The move comes amid growing concern about the city’s hotel capacity as the clock ticks down on Vancouver’s turn as host city for the FIFA 2026 World Cup.
“We have the same amount of rooms today as we did in 2002,” Destination Vancouver CEO Royce Chwin said.
“We need to do something about it, we are a decade and a half behind, and if we don’t, we will lose this important business that’s part of a $9-billion visitor economy to other jurisdictions.”
A city staff report concluded Vancouver currently has 13,000 rooms in 78 hotels. There are another 4,200 in the development pipeline, but just 1,300 of those are under construction or fully permitted.
Meanwhile, Destination Vancouver estimates the city needs to add 10,000 hotel rooms by 2050 or risk losing out as much as $30 billion in lost economic opportunity.
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Tuesday’s vote gave the green light to a new city hotel development policy that aims to increase the opportunities to build new hotels.
It also approved staff recommendations to amend the city’s rezoning policy for the downtown core to allow for mixed-use hotel-residential projects, and to amend the Broadway Plan to allow hotels on certain sites.
“The report today was a really good step forward — it brought forward a number of positive changes, such as allowing hotels in different neighbourhoods across the city. So seeing more opportunity, for example, in the commercial areas in the Broadway plan, along West Second in Mount Pleasant in conjunction with industrial, and simply opening up sites downtown that had previously been restricted from building new hotels,” Coun. Sarah Kirby-Yung said.
“We are still hearing it is very difficult to finance and get a hotel project built and across the finish line.”
Not everyone is supportive of the policy changes.
Critics and hotel union workers rallied outside Vancouver City Hall on Monday, calling the hotel policy a “giveaway to developers,” and arguing the city should be prioritizing efforts to build more affordable housing.
“They talk in the policy about there being a labour shortage of hotel workers, and the only reason there is a perceived labour shortage is because of a complete lack of affordable housing in the city, most of our members have to commute one, two hours each way,” said Unite Here Local 40 campaigner Nate Holers.
“You are not going to be able to actually staff these hotels and have these jobs if there is no place for the workers to live.”
There are several new hotels slated to come online in the coming years.
While other projects remain less certain at this stage, Chwin gave “kudos” to councillors for indicating they were serious about supporting the sector.
“It really comes down to the policy recommendations that could speed up or enable the development of these properties,” he said.
“We really need to send a signal to developers that Vancouver is open for business, that council recognizes the importance of hotels to the broader economy, and here’s what we can do to support it, or that capital leaves and it goes somewhere else.”
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